Result: not so many dead wild trees; fewer monocrop tree plantations, reduced use of  horrendous paper-processing chemicals. To say nothing of less giant log truck exhaust.

In other words, I’ve been cleaning out a few bookcases, bookcases that haven’t been cleaned out for quite a while. In addition to books, photographs and assorted memorabilia, they contained folders that I’d been thinking were full of old manuscripts but were in fact full of self-published food newsletters.

Tons – well, many pounds – of food newsletters. Newsletters beyond counting, from gifted writers and the prose-challenged, from good cooks and from people who should not be allowed near kitchens except in restaurants.

Old copies of keepers like The Art of Eating, Simple Cooking and Food History News will go to the Cushing library (which may be the very last library on earth willing to accept such things). The rest – into the recycle bin, with gratitude that there is finally something reasonably benign to do with unwanted paper.

For 4-6 servings:

Go down to the upright freezer, where “ready to eat,” items are stored. Extract:  the last qt. of Haddock, Corn and Crab Chowder with Chanterelles, 1 qt. Succotash (Black Mexican corn and Dr. Martin lima beans), 1 qt. of something labeled “Chicken and Corn stock, strong flavor, thin texture,” and 1 1/2 c. Chanterelle Cream Sauce.

Combine and heat. Decide more chanterelle is needed. Go back down to the mushroom section and get a little bag of Chanterelles in Butter. Add. Reheat. Serve topped with shredded lettuce and minced scallion.

In other words

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your freezers!

At this point T.A.G is more of a cultural artifact than a source of great recipe ideas, but there are a few gems that still shine with undiminished luster. A “Congealed Avocado and Chicken salad,” for instance, contributed by Mrs. Jacque Puken, of Eunice, LA, doesn’t sound all that promising, but in fact it’s absolutely delicious and a perfect make-ahead for a crowd. It’s hearty enough to be a main dish, light enough to play well with all the chili, boudin and/or brats, easy to serve and easy to eat  - with or without a fork.

Molded and served like pate; no fork needed

Molded into a loaf and sliced; fork needed. Also chips. (Crunch must not be overlooked.)

When I decided to do this I was thinking only about New Orleans. But  just to put the cherry on the congealed salad, you could say it’s a tribute to Indianapolis as well; the gelatin obviously binds it to  the jello-based concoctions so popular in the Midwest.*

Sorry Hoosiers, but there’s simply no contest – you’re gonna get beat in the kitchen no matter what happens on the playing field. When your culinary historians can’t come up with anything more than corn, pork sandwiches and being the birthplace of Wonder Bread, you know you’ve got a problem.

Background: I wasn’t planning to talk about the Super Bowl – what’s to say, really? – at all but then I got annoyed by a recipe for a “lighter, more contemporary” gumbo, clearly timed to address football eats in a year when New Orleans – !Go Saints! – is playing for the first time. Nothing really wrong with the dish in question except its fundamental premise: traditional gumbos in all their assorted glories are to be passed over in favor of  modernity and abstemiousness.

Please.

But then what? New Orleans is a place that loves parties, food and talking about food in pretty much equal measure; there are dozens of terrific cookbooks and websites full of jambalayas and gumbos, po’ boys and peacemakers. No need for me to insert my oar into those familiar waters.

Off to the cookbook shelf, there to be greeted by an old friend.

Those scribbles are a gift from the pre-owner, who noted several favorite rolls and and desserts.

Almonds and lettuce can also provide crunch, if you've already had too many chips

CONGEALED CHICKEN AND AVOCADO SALAD ( adapted from Talk About Good)

For  about 1 1/2 quarts, 8- 10 main dish servings, enough pate for 25 or more, depending on what else you’re having. (Recipe may be doubled, which would tidily use one 4 lb. chicken)

Chicken salad:

1 1/2 c. strong chicken broth

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

1 tbl. lemon juice

1 c. finely diced celery

3 tbl. minced parsley ( you can of course substitute cilantro, but it’s interesting to taste avocado without it – kind of like apples without cinnamon)

3 cups chopped cooked chicken, light and dark meat

1/2 c. plus 2 tbl. mayonnaise

salt and white pepper

Avocado topping:

1 envelope unflavored  gelatin

1 1/4 tsp. salt

1 small onion, finely shredded or grated

2 tbl. lime juice

1 1/2  large or 2 small avocadoes, enough to make 1 heaping c. mashed

1/3 c. sour cream

1/3 c. finely dicd green pepper (use part or all jalapeno if you like, but see parsley, above)

For serving:

Crisps and crunchies: crackers, corn chips, toasted sliced almonds, shredded lettuce…

1. Assemble molding pans: loaf, bowl, fancy molds… rinse with cold water, line with plastic wrap and set aside. Don’t forget that if you want to have avocado on top of a tapered mold you have to prepare and put that layer in first. As long as the first layer is chilled before the second one goes on, order doesn’t matter.

2. For the chicken: Put 1/4 cup room temperature broth in a heatproof bowl, sprinkle on the gelatin and let soften, then heat the rest of the broth just to boiling and stir it in to dissolve. Add the lemon juice. Let the mixture cool, then refrigerate until gloppy – thickened but not yet solidified.

3. Stir in the celery, parsley and chicken, then the mayo. Taste, then season quite highly with salt and pepper. Put it in the prepared pan(s), pressing down to remove air spaces. Cover and chill.

4. For the Avocado: Put 2 tbl. cool water in a heatproof bowl, sprinkle on the gelatin and let soften, then stir in 1/3 c. boiling water, the salt, onion and lime juice. Cool, then chill until gloppy (see above).

5. Mash the avocado now. Stir in the sour cream and diced pepper and add to the gelatin mixture. Taste and adjust salt. (If the avocados taste bland, a tiny pinch of sugar and a drop – literally – of peanut oil may help). Spread over the chicken layer and chill.

That’s it. Salad keeps 2 or 3 days refrigerated, cover tightly to keep the onion odor from spreading around. I’m still playing with the leftovers from recipe testing. Made little turnovers this afternoon with some ( also leftover) flaky sour cream pastry. Very tasty; the gelatin keeps the filling moist without turning the crust soggy.

* Parts of the south, too, to tell the truth. T.A.G offers many jello-based extravaganzas that would be right at home on the banks of the Wabash.

No cracks about this being a rather ladylike version; the Junior League gets to party too

A few favorite moments from Talk About Good :

A recipe for Veal Scallopini Dip ” for a large crowd” that starts out by having you cut 6 to 8 pounds of thinly sliced veal into 1×2 inch pieces,which are then floured and deep fried before being stewed into submission.

A recipe for OKRA (Summer Preparation for Winter Gumbo) that reminds me of my own exhortations about making use of the freezer. It begins: ” I buy fresh okra by the sack in summer and freeze it cooked down, ready for instant winter gumbo when water and seafood are added…” Needless to say, there’s a lot more than okra in the recipe and its author admits ” You can easily allow one day for the preparation,” before saying “but it’s well worth it…”

A recipe for Easy Guacamole Salad that starts with mashing several ingredients and helpfully advises ” (This is best done with a child’s potato masher if you can find one, otherwise use a pastry blender)…”

A recipe for Chicken Genoa that would probably surprise Italians by calling for a pound of butter to cook two 2-pound chickens. You do skin the chickens first…

Quick Grits souffle for 100? It’s in there. Tamales (25 or 30 dozen)? Gotcha covered.

This was in 1975. According to the cover of the current edition, 750,000 have been sold, so there is undoubtedly a copy or six at a used bookstore near you.

Meanwhile, on the arts front, check out the high-end trash talk and wager between the rival cities’ art museums. Just when you’re feeling gloomy about culture in America, here comes this priceless piece of good cheer.

It’s also a reminder – should Black Friday find you in appliance shopping mode –  that shiny black surfaces in the kitchen are a very bad idea. This is not a room where it’s wise to have water spots look like dirt.

Poor fellow can barely see himself; and I'd just washed it that morning!

Bill built the Maine oven so the process could be filmed, so in a way I can thank The Three Thousand Mile Garden for that one. But that one never would have happened if the New York one hadn’t came first, and although Bill did of course build it the ultimate thanks there should probably go to his childhood.

There were several outdoor bread ovens in the neighborhood where he grew up, including one at his grandmother’s place. He never forgot the bread –  or the fact that the ovens were home built – so when I started making wistful noises about how nice it would be to have one they fell on receptive ears.

Next thing to be thankful for: he’s a man of action. And that goes not just for building the ovens but also for providing instructions. You too can have one of these things, not without a bit of work and not instantly, needless to say, but very very inexpensively and it ain’t rocket science, either. Here’s his step by step how-to:

THE OUTDOOR BREAD OVEN

story and pictures by Bill Bakaitis

For a number of years now, ever since The Three Thousand Mile Garden TV series aired, we have received a steady stream of requests for assistance/plans/advice for building an outdoor bread oven similar to the one constructed for that series. The latest request, from a school in Australia, prompted me to post this commentary.
I know it is not time for most of us in the Northern Hemisphere to begin construction, but we can dream on and plan for the spring, while the Australian crew begins work now. In the plans which follow the first four or five steps can actually be done now, in winter, well in advance of that burst of construction that comes with spring.
Our two ovens, the first in New York, and the second in Maine, were inspired by reading The Bread Ovens of Quebec*, by Lise Boily and Jean-Francois Blanchette. Although the Italian side of my family, and the community in which they were immersed, made and used several outdoor ovens, these were all made of stacked paving brick and mortar.  That tradition quickly fell into eclipse as the American-born children of my mother’s generation found the glory of ready-made, plastic-wrapped, balloon-bread.  Why not? It Builds Bodies Twelve Ways proclaimed the wrapper. It was quick and easy to buy, to eat, to forget. Sort of soft in the mouth and in the mind, an authentic American product of the 1950’s.

I was too young to fully understand how those Italian bread ovens were constructed and Uncle Richard, my mother’s brother could find only one person, Angelo Don Francisco, who recalled how it was done. His sketchy instructions, however, were no match for the weighty anthropological reconstruction of the French Canadian ovens described by Boily and Blanchette.  It is a text I highly recommend. All of our plans and techniques were highly influenced by their research.
Here is how we did it.

HOW TO BUILD A CLAY/BRICK OUTDOOR OVEN

1. DIAGRAM YOUR OVEN:

Decide upon the size and shape of your oven. From the photographs on p. 69 of the Boily/Blanchette text, a simple scaling grid overlay set for the length you decide upon will give the height of the oven and its position at apex. The formula and graph on pp. 38 and 39 will give the height of the door opening relative to the height.  From p. 48 the length to width ratio of the base can be determined, and by subtracting the 10″ thickness of the clay ‘loaves’ which will make the side walls of the oven the inner size of the oven will result.

Plans for the New York Oven, as extrapolated from Boily/Blanchette typological considerations (p 38-39) overlaid onto Diagram, p 69.

Both of our ovens closely followed those dimensions used in the construction of the oven constructed for Boily text.

The base (see step 2 below) is 75″ X 47″ OD. The inner height of dome at apex is 32″, and the outer dimension (w 5″clay wall above) is 37″. The height of our door opening is 20″; the width of the door opening at its base is also 20″.  This gives a theoretical working interior of 27″X55″ (24.5 sq ft) although the Maine oven turned out to be substantially larger than the first one we made in NY.

This size oven will bake @ 10 round loaves plus 4- 8 baguettes of bread, along with a small pizza or two in one baking, followed by a few pies and slow cooked beets, tomatoes or other vegetables using only the residual heat of the firing. It is the long heat storage time of the clay mass which makes all of this possible.

If this oven is too large for your needs, you will want to reduce the dimensions by following the ratios arrived at by the research team. Leslie will describe various baking processes and techniques in a separate post.

2a. DECIDE UPON THE LOCATION OF YOUR OVEN:

It should be close enough to the kitchen to be convenient for watching the fires, transporting the raised loaves into the oven and the baked loaves into the house, as well as loading the oven with all of the subsidiary items to be baked: pies, roasts, root crops and the pans of ripe tomatoes to be put up. At the same time, consider the fire hazards and avoid placing the oven next to a combustible structure. You will see that we realized the importance of safety AFTER we built the New York oven. Over two tons of stone, mortar, and clay are impossible to move, and we need to be especially mindful of fire hazards when we use this oven, which places limits on the times we can safely use it.

2b. BUILD A BASE OF STONE, MORTAR, SAND AND RUBBLE:

It should be as long and wide as your plans dictate and end up being knee to thigh high so as to make the heavy work of tending the fires and baking the bread easy.  Ours was made of stone and matter that we gathered from our yard and garden.  I swept the road before the road crew in the spring for much of the sand and gravel, and some stone I gathered from road cuts in the area.

3. POUR A CEMENT HEARTH:

3a. Lay a pair of full dimension 2×4’s (such as the rough cut stuff found at sawmills) on edge across the top of the base during the last round of leveling. These will extend out beyond the side of the base and will become the support for the roof. If you can only find lumberyard milled material, it may be wise to double up or go with 4×4’s.

3b. Over these construct a 2X4 frame around the perimeter of the base. This will correspond to your OD measurements. However, if you extend the 2X4’s a foot to the front of your base you will be able to use these arms as a foundation for a removable apron, useful for staging the loaves after the fire has died down and the coals have been raked.

Fill this void with cement, imbedding the metal door frame 2 ” into the cement. For good measure I placed a few bolts through the perimeter 2X4’s into the inner void, to be firmly affixed when the cement was poured. In this way they become permanent redundant construction members able to be used in the future if need be.

3c. Our metal door opening frames were bent at a local foundry from stock 6″ X 3/16″ flat AR metal.  Remember to add a 4″ lip on both ends and to have the height 22″ (for a 20″ opening) since it will be set 2″ deep into the cement.

All of the above  can be done this fall and winter preceding the spring work with the sapling armature and clay. Winter is also a good time to locate and test the clay for step 5.

4. BEND A FRAME OF SAPLINGS INTO THE SHAPE OF AN IGLOO CAGE:

4a. With magic marker trace out the inner dimensions of your oven; mark the apex point.

4b. Nail together some scrap lumber to hold the saplings,

4c. Gather together a few dozen flexible saplings .5 to 1.5″ in diameter. Apple, Maple, Viburnum, and Alder are all good. Gather more than you think you will need. Then begin the bending, shaping and wiring using the thickest saplings to set the major meridians. I used electric fence wire or twine as needed.

4d. As the shape comes into being you can progress to smaller and smaller twigs. To my eye this armature is the most beautiful part of the oven, and yet it is there to be sacrificed in the first fire. Photos alone will save this work.

4e. Cover the armature with old sheets. We learned that by doing this the resulting interior of the oven is both smoother and larger.

5. OBTAIN YOUR MARINE CLAY: Locate and test your clay. In NY we used some from the east bank of the Hudson River. In Maine a local farmer brought us a load. Before you even bring the clay to your site, however, you will want to test a small loaf by firing it in a bucket of burning sawdust. The first site I came upon made a great looking brick, but it crumbled at the first touch

6. MAKE YOUR CLAY LOAVES AND BUILD UP THE OVEN WALLS.

During this process it is VERY important to wear a pair of tough rubber gloves. Otherwise the clay, which has a high pH, will work its way under your fingernails and into your skin causing puckering, chapping, and painful lesions. Take it from me, and I ain’t tender.

6a. Mix marine clay with sand and earth into a doughy paste. Children tromping in a mixing trough are traditional, but a rototiller works better. As it is used it will chew up a small depression in the ground into which clay, sand, and water can be added to the rototilled earth making a superb mixture. The object is to lighten the clay and make it sticky.

6b. Bind the clay with hay or straw into “loaves/bricks” of about 20-40 pounds each. Clay is incredibly heavy, even after lightening it with sand and earth. The purpose of the straw is twofold: it binds and lightens the bricks, making them easier to work with, and more importantly creates a myriad of air passages that allow steam to escape during the firing process. Without these passages the bricks will explode. You can easily see why the early brick making industry was located near places where both salt hay and marine clay were available. Haverstraw Bay, for example, is derived from “Paver straw”.

6c. Set the wet loaves of clay over the frame, molding them together. The walls should be 10″ thick at the base gradually thinning to 5″ over the top of the oven. It helps to lay in a course of reinforcing chicken wire over the first few courses above the metal door opening as this area expands under use, the heat causing cracks. We did not know to do this on the NY oven and a permanent crack now exists over the arch. The second oven, in Maine, incorporated the chicken wire reinforcement and has only two hairline cracks to the left and right of the arch, a result of better distributing the stress of expansion.

6d. I placed a single removable plug into first course at the rear of the oven so that I could use this as an auxiliary air intake if needed. A threaded pipe with end cap could also be used.

6e. Allow the clay to dry for a month, loosely covered to protect  from the weather until the roof is built. Patch any cracks as they appear.

7. ROOF YOUR OVEN TO PROTECT IT FROM THE WEATHER:

Once fired, the clay will become brick on the inside, but the outside will remain clay and must be protected from weathering. We originally used the board and batten method used in Quebec, but now (16 years later) are having the wood replaced by corrugated metal roofing, which is both fire proof and rot-resistant. For either method use the 2X4’s (3a above) as the platform. They run crosswise under the hearth. Lengthwise over these attach another set of 2×4’s and then use these as the base onto which the roof is supported.  Since some rot appeared in this secondary set over the years, I used pressure treated material this year as a support for the metal roof.

8. BURN OUT THE ARMATURE, FIRE THE BRICK:

At the end of the drying period, a series of small fires inside will burn out the wooden cage and turn the clay into brick.  These first fires will demonstrate the efficiency of the door to dome ratio planned in step 1. A bed of fire brick may be added above the cement floor. For us, they seem to work better than the naked cement.

9. MAKE A DOOR:

Now that all the wood is burned out the clean sweep of the metal door frame provides a perfect template for constructing your door. I used a plywood core with aluminum flashing on the inside, boards on the outside and wooden handles.  It is only put in place after the fire dies down and the coals are spread out to temper the held heat, and also during the baking process itself, so it will never see direct flame.

10. TO BAKE:

10a. Build 2 fires, 1/2 hour apart. Build the first fire in front and then push it to the rear as wood for the second fire is added. If one large fire is laid, flames will be more likely to shoot out the front and ignite the A-Frame roof.  To be safe, we keep a fully charged garden hose at the ready as we fire the oven. When the fire dies down spread the coals evenly over the entire surface of the hearth.

10b. Rake out the coals; we use a hoe to scrape them into a metal wheelbarrow or bucket. Use a wet mop to swab out the hearth.

10c. The bread is laid directly on the hearth, the door closed and the held heat of the brick does the baking:  10 minutes for pizza; 20 minutes for small loaves; 30-45 minutes for large loaves.

compare to the New York walls Celia's inspecting

More on the baking techniques, some tested recipes, oven maintenance tricks, etc. in future posts.

The Boily/Blanchette text has a much more detailed description of the construction of the oven. You will want to read it for the more complete process, particularly if you are a guy like me who assumes the y chromosome is a natural problem solving device.

*Note: After Bill put in the link for buying the  book, we learned it was a lot rarer  - and a lot more expensive! – than we realized. If you don’t mind downloading lots of pdf files, you can get it free online from the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Photos of Bill building the oven by Leslie

Daffodils are close to the peak, we’re now enjoying daily  bouquets. Small bouquets, it must be admitted, because I hate to cut any no matter how many there are, but still

it must be time to

Plant the second round of lettuce.

Find the bags of summer clothing. 

Wish Wordsworth had kept his mouth shut, and

issue another Neat Old Tool Alert.

Yard sale season is upon us, and although they’re not common any more, there’s still a chance you’ll run into one of these  pieces of

antique ironing equipment

Though it probably won’t say right on it what it was made for –

In the 19th century, one meaning of “sad” was heavy; sad irons were the solid iron irons used to remove wrinkles from just about everything made out of cloth.

These early irons came in a huge number of shapes and sizes, but they had two things in common: a flat bottom, for obvious reasons, and the need to be heated in some way that would not deposit soot on the business end.

The heaters were as various as the irons, but this kind of almost-griddle was fairly common. Most came with their own little stoves, though you could put them on your kitchen range if you felt like it, and the size of the surface allowed you to heat 2 irons at a time, so there was always a hot one ready when the one you were using began to cool.

A minor convenience, but every little bit counts when you have to iron everything and use a sad iron to do it.

What’s convenient these days is a large (@ 18 x 6 inch) super-heavy, super-shallow ( 1 inch deep) pan that’s pretty enough to bring to the table. Its griddlehood is obvious; the oval shape fits nicely over 2 burners no matter what’s fueling them. And it’s a great space saver in the oven.  

This potato cake baked between the oven door and the chicken roasting pan.

Because it’s black and heavy it puts a terrific crust on things. Also because it’s black and heavy it calls for a slightly cooler oven – pretend it’s pyrex and lower the heat @ 25 degrees.

Unless you’re making pizza, of course, when that heat holding mass just helps de-wimpify the common kitchen stove.

Start on the endless spring to-do list. Lawn and garden cleanup, shrub pruning, seed-starting, seed planting…

and (among yet other things)

* Consider the freezer

* Start on the bulb maps

* Figure out where the garlic is going to go

* Cut back and repot tired houseplants

* Scout for morel spots

* The Freezer: For those who live in the frost belt and want to be locavorous¹, “fresh” and “local” need to spend some time apart in the winter. It’s possible to live well on nothing but home-canned produce and the denizens of the root cellar, but it isn’t easy. And “well” is a relative term. For more on this, see A Love Letter to The Freezer.

If you don’t have a freezer, this is probably a good time to buy one. (Right now is a good time to buy almost anything, actually, except not lamb until Easter’s over.)

If you do have a freezer, you won’t be surprised to learn I found enough rhubarb for pie just yesterday, when I was looking for the last bit of squash tortilla base that I thought I had but evidently don’t.

In other words, time to use up anything left from last spring, including any asparagus soup you may have been hoarding. Wouldn’t hurt to work hard on last summer too – you’re going to need the room almost before you know it. Also the less there is in there, the easier it is to keep all of it frozen in coolers while you defrost the freezer - if this is the year to do that. Once every three does the job for us.

* Bulb maps: None of the ways I’ve drawn these so far have been entirely satisfactory, but all of them have been better than no map at all. At fall planting time there is simply no way to remember where things are needed, or where things already are that you don’t want to stab. Photos coupled with drawings with measurements are the most refined I ever got but I still whapped several crocus and an expensive daffodil so this year I’m going to try a grid.

* Figure out the garlic spot: The bed where the garlic will be planted won’t be needed until October, but knowing which one it will be helps determine succession plantings. If the garlic is going to follow the bush beans, for instance, the late beets will have to go somewhere else so you don’t want to waste the pepper area on late lettuce when that could share the former summer squash bed with the kale and broccoli raab.

* Cut back and repot tired houseplants: This can be done any time before summer, but doing it now has advantages.

a) New growth is just starting, so cutting back now means the plant won’t waste any of that energy.

b) Any trauma connected with root disturbance will be healed by the time it’s time to harden off the plants.

c) Busy as you are, you’re not as busy as you will be in May and June.

* Scout for morel spots: Driving around with Bill is driving around with somebody who’s always saying “ look at all those elms! that should be worth a visit next April.” He’s been collecting for more than 40 years and teaching about mushrooms for about 30 of them. His extensive morel hunting post, with many tips you won’t find elsewhere, is here.

Dying Elms at the edge of a well limed hay field often produce an abundance of Morels

Subtract the green to get the March view.

photographs by Bill Bakaitis

My George H.W. Oh boy is he ever out of it Bush moment. I did know disposable pods were part of the espresso boom, but until I went to Amazon to check how common these things might be…

OMG. Double eek. But there in the list was an oddity that almost defies imagination: ” The Java Wand is a portable, single serve, miniaturized French Press filter attached to a durable, hand blown, glass straw that brews and filters coffee and tea leaves in your cup.” 

If any of you have ever used one of these things, please send us a review. I burn to know, I really do.

The thermometer hit 1 below this morning, but it’s not the weather that brings freezing to mind; it’s the seed orders. That and the pre-surgery maps I made so Bill could understand my filing system. He puts up a lot of the food we freeze but I’m the one who moves it around so the tomatoes and corn are on the right in the big chest freezer and the soup assortment is on the 2rd shelf down in the upright.

that's venison on top

Somewhere on that shelf are, according to Bill: ” 2 cream of tomato, 3 curried corn, 1 squash and tomato, 1 cream of wild mushroom, 2 wild mushroom and duck, 2 summer squash and corn, 1 cream of morel.”  The minestrone is behind the first row of packets, so he didn’t count it.

Two freezers for two people who don’t entertain very often might seem a bit excessive, and the truth is we could get along with one. But we couldn’t get along without one. It’s our ticket to eating magnificently – and locally – all year.

As you can tell from the order of adverbs, our primary motive is gastronomic. The ecological benefits are a sort of lucky add-on. We need a freezer so we can:

1. Store a vast assortment of the perishable ingredients that make it easy and fun to cook, and

2. Have a  supply of heat-and-serve so large that “no time to cook” never stands between us and a good meal.

Ok, “never” is an exaggeration. But almost. No cooking marathons involved; it’s just a matter of making too much as often as possible. With a few obvious exceptions – ravioli come to mind – doubling most recipes doesn’t slow things down any more than pausing for a glass of wine.

I know, exaggeration again. But when you stop and think about it, quite a bit of the time spent cooking is time spent on things that doubling doesn’t change: getting out the food and equipment, applying heat and cleaning up.

Using a 12 inch sauté pan isn’t any more time consuming than using a 9 incher. It takes no more time to chop a cup of parsley to chop a half cup. And many other operations, like peeling carrots and dicing potatoes, go more and more quickly the more you do (within reason, of course).

An Illustrative Partial Inventory

Ready to heat and serve main dishes and pasta sauces: a 4×7 inch chunk of lasagna, 1 ½ quarts chicken and wild mushrooms in mustard cream, 4 quarts duck and sausage tomato sauce, 5 quarts wild mushroom tomato sauce, 4 quarts Southwestern harvest stew ( corn, fresh shell beans, yellow squash, hot peppers – there were 10 qts. in September), 1 quart duck carnitas for taco filling or baked potato topping, about a pint of eggplant parmesan…that last will get used in a topping or filling or be eaten as-is when one of us is away and I’m mentioning it because most freezer guides imply small quantities of leftovers don’t count. False. They count huge, even unto the single slice of meatloaf, assuming they’re wrapped securely and you don’t forget they’re there.

Vegetables: whole tomatoes – enough to fill a freezer section roughly 2×2x2.5, about a dozen quarts of raw tomatoes pureed in the cuisinart skins and all by Bill, 10 quarts of corn kernels, from both our own and purchased corn, around 12 pints of wild mushrooms cooked in butter – mostly hen of the woods and morels, 3 qts. shredded summer squash and onion base for squash tortilla …

Given the value of made dishes like minestrone and vegetable stew, we don’t bother with freezing plain tender green vegetables like beans and broccoli. No matter how carefully you process them you wind up with frozen beans and broccoli, so the only reason to do it would be some kind of 100 mile vow.

Baked Goods: enough with the quantities. There is an assortment of breads, plain and sweet, home made and purchased. Tortillas from the good tortilla store that we don’t visit often. Cookies, brownies, parts of cakes… all packaged in smallish parcels; frozen baked goods stale fast when thawed. Also unbaked baked goods – piecrust, cookie dough and all like that.

Meat: In our case it’s mostly venison now that the pre-order chicken lady is no longer around to hand over 8 plump organic roasters each fall. But of course a freezer is the great enabler of local organic pastured, humanely raised meat, still most commonly sold by the half or quarter.

Ingredients (This is the specialty-grocery-in basement part. Most of these things are shelf-stable if used fast but if the assortment is big enough you can’t use it fast enough): Perishable flours like whole wheat, garbanzo, buckwheat and cornmeal, unsweetened coconut, pecans,walnuts, pine nuts, pistachios, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, blocks of real-deal lard; maple syrup

There’s also pesto and wild mushroom duxelles and a lot of other stuff but by now the idea should be pretty clear.

Choosing Between Chest and Upright (two really is a bit much; our upright was a gift).

Chest freezers are usually less expensive per cubic foot of storage space, and they use less power than uprights because the cold air mostly stays put when you open the door.

On the other hand, it’s a lot easier to organize an upright; it doesn’t masquerade as a convenient tabletop, and if the chest lid stays open for eons while you move the layers around in search of something buried, the cold loss probably evens out.

The differences are small enough so that the best choice is probably the one that’s easiest to use, because you will actually use it. The best way to save on power is to have a modern, energy star freezer and set it up someplace cool and dry. The best way to have tasty frozen food is to be sure the freezer is manual defrost; most chest freezers are, many uprights aren’t. Apologists say the daily shots of heat that foil the frost in frost-free freezers are so brief they don’t affect the food. In my experience this is blatantly untrue. They use more power, too.

Minimalist Alternative: The freezer part of a refrigerator/freezer has more room in it than you might think if you keep the packaging to a minimum. Many things come in boxes that don’t need to stay in boxes after the box has enticed you to buy them. A flat quart bag of soup (see picture) takes up much less room than a yogurt tub. Try not to buy too much ice cream.

Maintenance

* Keep the freezer close to full. All those edible icecubes help save on power and may literally save your bacon if there’s a power outage. In spring, when stocks are depleted, pave the bottom with gallon jugs of water – which make very handy ice blocks btw.

* A full freezer is actually 2/3 -3/4 full. If air can’t circulate it drives the compressor crazy.

* Gaskets wear out eventually. There are two ways to test for tightness. 1) Close the door on a dollar bill and try to pull it out; if it comes easily it’s new gasket time. Do this  in several spots to be sure. 2) Put a bright flashlight in the freezer and turn out all the lights. Hope you don’t see anything. If it’s an upright, test each shelf.

Never noticed it mattering too much with bread, however, until the big pre-surgery flurry of stocking up. (Bill’s a good cook; but he doesn’t bake.) Lesson learned: if you’re trying to find your oven’s hot spot, just pave the whole rack with pans of sticky buns.

sticky buns as hotspot finder